Today's telecommunications providers are continuing to migrate to voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) networks to provide the feature-rich services and cost savings demanded by their customers. Most, if not all, telecommunications providers also want their respective VoIP networks to provide the reliability their customers have grown to expect from the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). However, network element failures in the existing backbone Internet protocol (IP) network and/or network failures in a provider's existing VoIP network implementation can result in call setup failures which degrade overall network reliability.